Finally, it has come full circle. A young climate activist, Disha Ravi, is arrested and charged with sedition over accusations that she edited and circulated a Google doc toolkit that was also tweeted by internationally famous climate activist Greta Thunberg about the ongoing protests by farmers in India. This arrest has raised much hue and cry not just in India but also globally. Within India, many social media accounts have jumped out of their skins to support the arrest in Bengaluru by the Delhi police. These account holders most likely would never have worked on Google Docs where hundreds can edit a document across the world simultaneously. Similarly, many of them would not know what ‘toolkit’ implies. Yet, the charge of sedition against Disha seems acceptable to the faithful.
The manner in which Disha was hounded out of her residence in Bengaluru and whisked away to Delhi by air by the Delhi Police without reportedly following due process of law involving arresting an individual is reminiscent of the dreaded knock on the door for taking a government critic into police custody during the Emergency clamped by Indira Gandhi in 1975. The irony is the BJP-led NDA government, which never misses an opportunity to bash the Congress for trampling civil liberties and perpetrating atrocities on people is now reinventing the horrors of Emergency. The arrest of Disha has all the elements of an authoritarian rule.
Indira is dead and gone. Emergency is history. India had started blossoming as a healthy democracy with a vibrant and growing economy. The Indian youth had started dreaming of becoming the citizen of a nation which was to be considered a world power. The GDP showed signs of a healthy growth and a general sense of happiness had started pervading the atmosphere. The first blot on this outlook was by the former Congress-led UPA government with its intense corruption. People got irritated and not once but twice voted the corrupt Congress out. However, the promises of ‘Vikas’ or development through unity (sabka saath sabka vikas) first got the deathblow with demonetization in November 2016. Then onwards, all laws enacted, police actions perpetrated and suppression of free speech have started working against that very promise of Vikas. India’s foreign policy has got muddled. The latest being international criticism heaped on India due to inept handling of the farmers’ agitation. A government that had reached its pinnacle through social media now seems frightened of those very platforms. If Twitter can boldly put forth its point by telling the Government of India ‘Let the tweets keep flowing’ implies, especially after the fall of Donald Trump that India is being spoken of in the same breath as North Korea or Syria. It could also mean that internationally, the message is out that India is in hot waters, which could be followed by a possible change.